Hi Everyone
I often have to browse through several levels of subassemblies to select an entity for mating.
I find this procedure very troublesome, as clicking an entity to search for the correct plane or axis will interfere with mate selection set.
Does anyone have a solution for this?
I was hoping that maybe someone had written a macro that allows you to click entities without adding them to the mate selection set before you tell the macro that you are ready to do so.
Regards
Michael
Michael,
Welcome to the forum,
You can also use the filter at the top of the feature manager
to type in select components to narrow down your search as well.
You can select the two mating entities and then select mate.
Hi again
Thanks for your replies
To answer your suggestion Tony, the problem is exactly browsing to- and selecting the entities as they are deeply imbedded in a very large Feature manager tree and many of the subassemblies are more or less similar.
Using the filter at the top of the FMDT is also a possibility but again: Many of my subassemblies are very much alike, also by name.
I think that "Isolate" is the way to go as long as Solidworks doesn't provide a better alternative.
Thank you very much for your assistance.
Michael
As Glenn mentioned, the most efficient way I have found is to select things before activating the Mate command. I assume you are talking about selecting reference planes rather than physical geometry. There are some very useful macros over at
http://sw.fcsuper.com/index.php?name=UpDownload&req=viewsdownload&sid=1
for selecting geometry. The one titled "Reference Geometry Selection" will take the last selection you have made in the graphics area and de-select it, then it will select the origin of that component. Running the same macro again immediately will select the Front plane, then the Top plane, then the Right plane, then back to the Origin. Mapping this macro to a hotkey will allow you to very quickly access the reference geometry of any component on-screen without having to dig through the tree.
The one titled "Assembly Selection Macros" will allow you to click on any component in the graphics area, then run the macro. The macro will un-select the entity you selected and then select the entire subassembly that owns that component. Then you can use the previously mentioned macro to get to the reference geometry of that subassembly. This macro should also be mapped to a hotkey. With these two macros together you never have to dig through the feature tree to find reference geometry.
The problem with these macros is that you can't run a macro with the Mate command active. Fortunately, you can get around ths one also by using macros. The macros titled "Insert Mate Distance (new version)" and "Various comprehensive assy mates" let you very quickly add mates using preselected entities. As assemblies get larger, SW gets slower and slower with the Mate command because it analyzes your selection set to see what mates are valid for your selections. This takes a long time. Usually, you already know what kind of mate you want, so this extra time is just a waste. These macros add the specified type of mate very quickly.
Michael,
Welcome to the forum. I don't know how much this will help you, but when I have a similar situation I have developed the habit of selecting the entity that's hard to find before selecting the mate command.
Glenn
Hi Glenn
Not a bad idea. Only both of my mates are hard dt find. I often have to click the planes to see where they are and there goes my selection set....
I would think that it's a small feature for SW to implement in the next version.
Think I'll suggest it to SW.
Michael
If they are both hard to find, try finding the entities and expanding the FM tree for those entities before selecting the mate command. Then when you get in the mate command the tree will usually, but not always, still be expanded to where you had it.
Try using the Isolate function when applying mates. This will hide all but the selected parts, and make selection for mates much easier.